More Things I Learned While Traveling...

Of course, you had to know that I wasn't done ranting.  Why?  Because I hadn't yet made the plane ride home from Spokane.

Due to circumstances I was forced to fly three planes home and started off with an on time flight from Spokane to Portland (Oregon).  All was well but I didn't get to see mountains because it was cloudy and because the man next to me in the window seat shut his window cover and couldn't take his eyes off the flight attendant's cleavage.  (Pretty sure he needed a special eye doctor after that flight.)  I don't know how she managed to have cleavage in that outfit, but she did.  It was Alaska Airlines and they have a little cloth bustier thing that made this lady very happy.  However, she didn't really care for the man's attention because she kept mentioning her "boyfriend", her "child", and the fact that she lived in "Medford" (Oregon), and hated it.  (Sorry Medfordians, I didn't say it.  She did.)

Anyway, it turned out that watching the sixtysomething man drool over the twentysomething stew's cleavage was the "good" flight.  I got to sit in 1B and I was the first one off the plane.  (I do not know how this happened.  It will probably never happen again.)  This would be like an omen, a sign of impending doom for the day to come.  (The first thing is good.   Then everything rolls downhill.  Like poop, except smellier and with wings and perky flight attendants.)

The next flight was from Portland to Atlanta.  I got the window seat this time.  I also got adolescents.  Two of them.  Boy adolescents.  When they saw that they had to sit with me in the same aisle, their little horndog hearts broke on the spot.  (I heard the noise.  I did.)  For the empty window seat, they'd been hoping for the twentysomething supermodel/hooker with a heart of gold/billionaire stripper who travels economy looking for cute young things to hook up with.  Seriously, their faces went like this:

Please.  Please. Please. Please.  Please.

Upon realizing that I was to be their seatmate, they went to this:

Oh, poopcicles.

It was very sad.  I didn't really mind as I cannot possibly be mistaken for the twentysomething supermodel/hooker with a heart of gold/billionaire stripper.  However, the skinny little fifteen year old in the seat next to me kept snatching his elbow back everything he accidentally touched my side, as if his arm had been dipped in acid and then looking at me as if I was a troll.  (I was getting tired by that time and I might have looked like a troll.  I certainly felt like a troll with my ass permanently attached to the seat.  Seriously, I had to ask the flight attendant for a spatula.)  About the twentieth time he did that, I snapped, "I don't want to touch you anymore than you want to touch me, kiddo."  It turns out that you can fit two adolescent horndogs into one airplane seat, because after my snarkiness, the kid moved so far to the left, he was practically sitting on his brother's lap.  (Their mommy was sitting toward the front of the plane.  Smart lady.  She came back precisely twice on a four hour flight to check on them but only because she was genetically required to do so.  She was enjoying her man-alone time and no, Daddy, or possibly Daddy-replacement number unknown, did not check on the two demon spawn.)

Also, personal note to the young woman with the TWO boxes of Voodoo Donuts who got on at Portland, you can sit next to me anytime.  (Voodoo Donuts makes voodoo doll men donuts, Captain my Crunch donuts, bacon maple bars, which DO have bacon on them, and the triple chocolate penetration donut.  See here.  I'm totally not making it up.)

Think I saw this guy in Atlanta.

The third flight I was in the middle seat, which is inarguably the suckiest seat to have, but fortune smiled!  No one was in the window seat, so I moved on over and slept with my head against the window.  I don't remember the flight because by this time, it was midnight and the flight had been delayed for two hours AND the person manning the boarding pass checking machine was too stupid to have that responsibility.  (She took someone's boarding pass, scanned it, listened to it bleep in dismay and flash RED, RED, RED!  Then she scanned it again.  Same boarding pass.  It did the same thing.  She did this twenty-two times.  I started counting after the third time.  Twenty-two times.  After the tenth time I was ready to shriek at her and possibly fling feces at her, for good measure.  After the twenty-second time she scratched her bouffant hair.  She looked confused.  Then she went to her computer and left the other people waiting to board just standing there.  Me included.  We just stood there looking at the estimated take-off time change from 11:50 p.m. to 12:05 a.m. to 12:15 a.m.  Then she finally just let the people with the weird boarding pass on the plane without doing anything else.  So much for security because that fine, outstanding, airline representative was on the job doing her thang.)  (This is why they sell $7 alcoholic drinks on planes now and people do buy them.  I totally got the rum and coke for $7.)  Of course, we sat in the plane for about twenty minutes while the bouffant consulted with the flight attendants about proper boarding pass machine procedure before the door was finally shut and everyone sighed a massive, simultaneous sigh of relief.  (Kind of like gas but not as smelly.)

Finally, we landed and I swear my luggage was the last one (LA-ASSSSSSS-TTTTTT) to come out of the tunnel/chute/thingymabob.  This I fore swear.  Also the next time I buy luggage I'm buying neon pink zebra striped ones so I know exactly where mine is.)

See.  This kid knows how to travel right.

I hate flying.  I hate flying.  I hate flying.